by Sean Ellis
Though she and DiLorenzo were instantly plunged into darkness, the flare revealed a series of images as it traversed the space above the parade ground. The dancing flame sailed out over the edge of the terrace, revealing a strange and ominous landscape in its ephemeral illumination.
Below the parapet at the edge of the walkway where they stood descended long rows of carved stone tiers, forming a vast amphitheater at least thirty rows deep. The sphere of light did not extend to where the seating area eventually ended, but was quenched as the flare dropped into the debris-strewn area. In the final moment before the light blinked out, Mira caught a glimpse of something moving in the irregular crevices formed by the stone steps—something, or rather many somethings, scurrying to maintain their age-old concealment in darkness. Though the illumination was utterly squelched, the sound of skittering across bare stone filled the vast auditorium for several seconds afterward.
“I don’t think we’re alone in here,” she remarked, unaware that her voice had dropped to a loud whisper. She reached back and slipped a flare from her pack, but DiLorenzo’s hand found her wrist, gently halting her.
“Look up.”
Reflexively, her head tilted back, her unseeing eyes gazing into the invisible upper reaches of the cavern. Then, almost right away, she realized that she could see something—a vague outline barely visible against the high, domed ceiling. As her pupils continued to dilate, growing more accustomed to the absence of the flare’s brightness, she realized that the light level in the chamber was nearly equivalent to the twilight moments before the sun’s rising.
“How is that possible?” ventured DiLorenzo. “We’re deep underground.”
“Natural luminescence perhaps.” Mira could hear the lack of conviction in her own voice. Though she knew of caverns where lichens produced a phosphorescent orange or green glow, the light that suffused the vaulted ceiling of the cavern was different.
As her ability to perceive the light increased, she got her first real look at the underground chamber. Though her initial response to the title Parade Grounds had been dubious, she now felt a grudging admiration for what the architect had accomplished. However, as was the case with history’s greatest man-made wonders, Mann had only been able to achieve such magnificence through unimaginable brutality.
The source of the light was limited to the ceiling dome. The hemisphere, stretching well over a hundred yards in diameter, was the source of the pale blue emanation, and provided the first real measure of the chamber. The illumination ended nearly fifty feet above the level of the terrace, but provided enough light to confirm her earlier speculation that the walkway did indeed form a circle. And now she could discern other details about the terrace.
A series of ornate columns, each crowned with an enormous winged figure, rose toward the dome. At first glance, the standards appeared to be eagles, but in the failing twilight Mira could make out human features as well. “Valkyries,” she murmured, thinking aloud. “Norse mythology. Typical.”
Her eyes continued to roam the dimly lit chamber, gradually acquiring details that never would have been revealed by the flare’s light. Six descending staircases, arranged symmetrically like the rays of light from a star, led down into the amphitheater. As her vision improved, she could see still more. The lowest reaches of the auditorium became visible, though only through a veil of night. Below the last row of seats was a vast open area.
“That parade ground is big enough for a full military pageant,” she said, pointing down into the darkness. “Or the Olympic games.”
“Hitler liked to show off.”
Mira nodded. “Impressing the rank and file with cheap theatrics was the very essence of his philosophy. And was no doubt to be the foundation for rebuilding his Third Reich again. . . .”
Her voice trailed off as her eyes were drawn to a shadow, moving up from the depths of the amphitheater. She squinted into the darkness, trying to discern more detail, but could tell only two things: the shape was large, and it was moving quickly. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied another silhouette, a slightly darker spot, bounding up a different flight of stairs, then another close behind the first.
“Company’s coming,” she observed, drawing her pistol and flicking off the safety. “Let’s give them a proper reception.”
Jorge Montero pressed his fists against either side of his head, trying to drown out the screams that drifted down from the opening in the rock face. And although the anguished cries had already fallen silent, mere seconds after the first tortured shriek was heard, the sound Montero could not quiet was merely a memory of that horrible instant, and the realization that he had sent his best friend to his death.
The heir to Odessa stood at the base of the cliff, accompanied by Delacortes, the cocaine baron, and a loose collection of their respective soldiers. Montero’s men were dressed in black uniforms and sporting the finest in automatic weapons while the Bolivians working for Delacortes wore jeans, ragged slogan t-shirts and baseball caps, and carried a motley arsenal of cast-off army surplus and other assorted firearms with visibly questionable maintenance histories. In spite of the obvious disparity between the two, there was a uniting factor that, for the moment at least, leveled the playing field: a look of horror that was fixed on the countenance of each man.
Mira Raiden and her companion had left an easy trail for them. That path had led them directly to a sheer rock face, and Montero had easily deduced where the prey had gone. At his order, two of their number, Guillermo Petronilo and one of Delacortes’ men, had scaled the rock face, setting belays for the rest of the group to follow. Then they had ventured inside the crevice, scouting ahead as the rest of the group prepared to follow. Less than half a minute later, the screams began, followed by an unexpected eruption of steam. The fate of the two men inside was beyond question.
Montero lowered his hands, still balled into tight fists, and gazed once more at the crack in the rock wall. He was no stranger to sending his soldiers on deadly missions. His recent struggles with Mira Raiden had already begun to harden him to such losses, but Petronilo? His closest friend? Not in his most pessimistic visions had he ever seen himself without Guillermo at his side. And if Petronilo could die, then was not he also vulnerable?
The steam vent continued to loom above them, a humorless grimace, leaking wispy trails of water vapor. Mira Raiden had evidently ventured into the fissure. Was she, too, dead somewhere in the unknown passages beyond their line of sight? Or had the ever-resourceful bitch eluded fate once more, slipping from his grasp to race ahead to the prize? Somehow, he knew the answer was not the former.
Mustering his courage, he turned to Delacortes, his lips already framing the orders that would send another pair of men into harm’s way. The cocaine baron stared back at him, an expectant look of dread on his face. The rest of the Bolivian locals shared their employer’s palpable apprehension. Worse, he saw the same fear in the eyes of his own men. Drawing back the words with an inhalation, he switched gears. “What do you know about this geyser?”
Delacortes’ face went blank for a moment. “We do not come up here, señor. But there are many geysers such as this throughout the region. They are very unpredictable. . . . But señor, they are simply pits of steam and sulfur. They do not lead to anything.”
“This one does. It leads to Mira Raiden.” He swung his eyes back to the fissure. “And I am going to find her.”
Mira sighted down the barrel of the pistol in her right hand, leading the nearest shadow by a few feet. When she was marginally sure of her shot, she squeezed the trigger. Before she could register whether or not her bullet had struck true however, her world vanished once more into darkness.
“Damn it!” Her curse was squelched by the retort of the gun blast, which echoed through the chamber like a crack of thunder.
“I can’t see,” shouted DiLorenzo, barely audible through the ringing sound in Mira’s ears.
She muttered a curse again. Shooting in the dark had been a
rookie mistake. She knew better. The muzzle flash of that single gunshot had erased her night-vision, constricting her pupils and leaving a bright spot of color burned into her retinas.
Holstering the pistol, she reached back into the side pouch of her backpack. Her fingers felt the smooth, cylindrical casings of the remaining flares, five in all. She grimaced into the darkness: another amateurish blunder. Poor planning on her part not to bring more, but there was no use worrying about it now. She slipped one of the flares free and struck it. Illumination instantly filled the area around them, causing another moment of blindness. Before their eyes could readjust, the shadows attacked.
Mira threw her hands up reflexively, her left dropping the flare and in the same instant closing on something warm and rough. The sudden burst of light revealed only a slavering bestial head, with teeth bared in a feral snarl. As her fingers tightened, grasping the loose flesh around the animal’s neck, it lunged for her throat. Its momentum knocked her backward, but even as she fell, she twisted, redirecting the fury of the attack away from her face. As Mira and the assaulting beast hit the stone surface of the terrace, she hammered the butt of her pistol against the side of its head, but this only further enraged the creature.
A step behind her, DiLorenzo was clenching his small revolver, waving it around in search of a target. With each indecisive second, more of the attacking animals drew closer, unafraid of the intruders in their realm.
Wild dogs, thought Mira, hammering again with the solid metal of the gun. The weapon broke through the tough flesh protecting the beast’s skull, but it continued to twist in her grip, teeth snapping at her exposed jugular. She could taste its hot, carious breath blasting against her face, and knew that the crazed animal would eventually overpower her. Abandoning the brute force defense, she chose a simpler method. A single shot from the pistol, its muzzle pressed under the dog’s thrashing jaws, blasted away a large chunk of the animal’s skull.
Even as she thrust the carcass away, Mira rolled into motion, staying low to avoid DiLorenzo’s field of fire, and searched for another target. Two from the pack were close enough to pose an immediate threat—close enough that one of them would certainly get through their defenses. She sighted on the closest and opened fire, squeezing and holding the trigger, tracking the animal’s approach with a volley of lead. The hollow-point rounds exploded against the stone of the terrace, blasting chips of rock and dust that tore into the dog’s toughened hide, but none of the bullets found their mark. As the dog bounded across the remaining distance, her gun went empty. The beast launched into air, its teeth bared and seeking her throat.
Mira countered the imminent threat almost without thinking. She leapt into the air, her feet rising three feet off the ground, twisted and whipped her right foot around. The toe of her boot connected solidly with the dog’s head, snapping it to the side even as it deflected the momentum, sending it hurtling past like a misguided missile. But in the instant her feet returned to the stone terrace, the tide of the battle turned.
She did not immediately feel the teeth ripping through the cloth of her combat trousers or tearing into the flesh of her left calf muscle. The force of the surprise attack, from a third dog approaching unseen from behind, sent her stumbling headlong.
She recovered quickly, turning her fall into a controlled shoulder roll, and came back to her feet in a low crouch. The back of her leg was starting to throb, but she easily dissociated herself from the pain. There would be plenty of time to worry about that later if they survived. As she completed the somersault, she slammed a fresh magazine into her pistol and fired blindly at the place where she expected the dog to be. Even as the first round exploded from barrel of her pistol, Mira knew she was exposing her back to yet another of the wild pack.
DiLorenzo shook off his hesitation, but his shooting accuracy proved no more effective than Mira’s. He emptied the .38 at the dog approaching from Mira’s exposed flank, but the rounds zinged harmlessly into the dark shrouded walls of the cavern.
Mira’s pistol clanked empty again a moment later, their foes no closer to being vanquished than when the cacophony of gunfire had begun. Four dogs now circled them, chastened perhaps by the noise and fury, but in no way daunted. They had the scent of blood now and nothing would dampen their lust for flesh. The momentary ebb of the battle tide allowed Mira her first good look at the pack.
It was difficult to judge the breed of the dogs. They were large, possibly Alsatians, but the rigors of living in the hostile micro-environment had left them disfigured almost beyond recognition. Their pelts were virtually non-existent, replaced by a network of scars and open wounds from a combination of in-fighting and parasitic infestations. What little mangy fur remained was stretched over lean, almost emaciated frames, and this, combined with the fact that their ears had long ago been torn from their skulls, gave them the appearance of reanimated canine corpses.
Mira felt the slow burn of her wound, pulsing in time with her heartbeat, and growing in intensity with each passing minute. God only knows what I’ve been infected with, she thought, holstering her empty gun without reloading. No time to worry about that now.
With a smooth, almost practiced motion, she reached around and grabbed hold of the MP-5K, slung from a web strap underneath her pack. The dogs, unaware of the firepower in her hands, continued to circle closer. Cradling the weapon in both arms, she braced the stock against her right shoulder, and feathered the trigger.
The automatic weapon spewed a burst of rounds in the general direction of the closest dog. Two of the rounds found their mark, blasting the animal sideways. Its squeals of agony continued long after the fight was over.
DiLorenzo took his cue from Mira and abandoned the useless revolver, turning the full fury of his own machine pistol against the pack. The ensuing melee was mercifully short. The cavern came alive with flashes of light and thunder, peppered with the noise of bullets impacting and ricocheting on the carved stone surfaces. The feral dogs continued braying and snarling, but the show of deadly force had thrown them into confusion. Mira and DiLorenzo walked their fire into the scattering beasts, cutting them down before they could think to flee or press their attack. Unfamiliarity with automatic weapons caused DiLorenzo to run empty first, a scattering of spent brass cartridges at his feet, but what he lacked in accuracy he made up for with volume. Two of the pack had fallen to rounds from his weapon. Mira chose her targets with more care, dropping three and wounding two more as they retreated into the impenetrable darkness of the cavern. Almost as quickly as it had begun, the attack ended.
“Are you all right?” shouted Mira, barely able to hear herself over the ringing echoes of gunfire in her ears. DiLorenzo nodded, fumbling with the weapon in order to eject the spent magazine. She tossed him a spare, adding an admonition. “Be careful with it. There’s no telling how many more surprises we’ll run into, and we don’t have much ammo left.”
She retrieved the flare from the floor and held it up as a torch to light their way. The battle had curtailed her efforts to grasp the scope of the amphitheater above the parade grounds, but she had no difficulty recognizing the significance of its scale. In designing such a vast auditorium, Mann had revealed the enormity of the Nazi Party’s grandiose vision. From the fastness of their mountain crèche, the reborn Reich would have wielded two pieces of the Trinity, more than enough to realize the dream of world domination, which had eluded their Fuehrer. Had Mann’s U-Boat completed its journey sixty years earlier, the world would have become a very different place.
They turned into one of the stairway alcoves, following the tunnel underneath the uppermost ring and down into the gallery below. The carved stone tiers appeared to offer little in the way of creature comfort. Doubtless, the gathered masses would be too busy chanting with arms raised in salutes to notice that there was nowhere to sit. Mira reckoned that the auditorium could probably hold a standing crowd of nearly twenty thousand persons. She wrinkled her nose, unconsciously imagining the closed environm
ent of the cavern filled with passionate, sweaty, chanting hordes of Nazis gulping down the last gasps of fresh air.
“It doesn’t look like this leads anywhere,” observed DiLorenzo. Indeed, the final tier of the amphitheater, ringed by a waist-high parapet, looked down on the black cinder floor of the parade grounds two stories below. If there was a way down to the floor, it was hidden in the shadows beyond the reach of the flare’s illumination.
“We’ll find what we’re looking for on that dais,” she replied, gesturing toward one end of the parade ground where an ornate stage had been carved. “I’m betting that the leaders of this outfit had their own private entrance in order to avoid mixing with the rabble.”
DiLorenzo grunted an ambiguous reply. Mira did not add that she felt an intuitive desire to proceed in the direction she had indicated. The Trinity relics were drawing each other together like a pair of oppositely charged magnets.
Montero gazed down at the small army of men, wondering if any would follow in his footstep, should the worst come to pass. His own men, the loyal soldiers of Odessa, would follow him into hell if he gave the order, but the Bolivian locals were another story. They obeyed him now out of fear and the promise of a reward. Still, the hidden caverns beneath the mountain probably concealed a horde of wealth beyond the wildest dreams of the motley collection of bandits and drug runners. He shuddered to think about the prize treasures of his forefathers in the hands of such uncultured individuals.
He had watched the geyser through three more cycles, establishing the certainty of its pattern, and calculating exactly how long he would have to find a place of safety, provided such a refuge existed. There was every possibility that the tunnel beyond the fissure led to nothing more than a bubbling pit of mud, too far inside the mountain for him to turn back in time. That was the chance he was going to have to take in order to cement the loyalty of his men.